OU student’s book is published
By Lindsey Wojcik
Scene and Mix Editor
After about a year and a half of researching the history of the RTS Transit Bus, junior journalism major Evan McCausland’s book “Rapid Transit Series Buses: General Motors and Beyond” will be published May 15, 2008.
“The bus was relatively radical in terms of its launch but it’s proven to be a staple of the industry and nobody’s done the history of it, so I decided to start bridging the links together and put together a history of all 40 years of it’s production,” McCausland said.
The book is mostly recollections of the history of the RTS Transit Bus but also includes a chapter of a recent change in the industry, when a company called Millennium Transit Services tried launching the manufacturing of the buses in 2006 and production was stalled.
“It transgressed from collecting historical information, interviewing and making sure it was all accurate but also trying to report on something that was semi-breaking at the time,” McCausland said.
Day in and day out, McCausland spent time researching the history of the bus at Kresge Library, the Detroit Public Library and interviewing people in the industry who knew about the history.
After organizing his notes and grouping his thoughts together, McCausland said the writing process came in bursts.
“I found myself up late on a Friday night just randomly typing,” he said.
Although the balance of writing a book and keeping up with his school work may have been challenge, he said, “I think it was a good thing to do this book now because the company was spiraling into a questionable future and I think if I did it any later, I probably wouldn’t have any response from them.”
